Upgrade StorageShowing pictures in Reports
When I create a report from a reference that contains a picture I get only the name of the gif or jpg. Especially for chemistry, it would be very helpful to actually display the picture, e.g. a reaction corresponding to the paper. Would that be possible? Thanks!
Ultimately, it would be perfect if we could cut-and-paste pictures (reactions) directly out of a pdf file.
First, it is important to understand how Zotero's rich text notes work. They are actually written in HTML by tinyMCE, so when you stick a image into a note you are actually generating a img tag that points to the image source. So here are three different scenarios for how you could include an image and the results.
1. Drag an image from your desktop into a note. Result: the image shows in the note but does not show up in the report.
2. Drag an image from a webpage into a note. Result: image shows up in the note and in the report. Take a look at the source code and you will see this is still a live link to the web, this is not ideal.
3. Drag an image from your desktop into the middle column of your Zotero collection. In my case this created a new item called image.jpg. Double click on the image. You should see the image in your browser and see "zotero://attachment/numberstring/" in your location bar. Drag the image from your browser into your note. You should see the image in your note and see the image in your report. If you look at the source code for your report you should see the img link to the local copy of your image in the Zotero directory, "zotero://attachment/numberstring/".
This might work slightly different on different operating systems so if folks want to test it and report back that would probably be useful.
When Firefox loads generates a report, it uses a 'zotero://' URL. Pages that use the 'zotero://' protocol will render images that use the 'zotero://' and 'http://' protocols, but not the 'file://' protocol. If you save a zotero report as 'Web Page, complete,' it will rewrite links & so your images won't be available. If you save it as 'Web Page, XHTML only' or copy/paste viewed source, it will retain links & your images should be available: pages that use the 'file://' protocol will render images that use the 'file://', 'http://', and 'zotero://' protocols.
I don't know why 'zotero://' pages don't load 'file://' images. Perhaps this can be fixed? Alternatively, perhaps zotero reports should not use 'zotero://' URLs? Let the user choose where to save a generated report (with/with out images exported to a local directory). Such an exported report would use the 'file://' protocol, which works with all images.
Finally, note that files on the local filesystem and copy/pasted images both make use of 'file://'. However, copy/pasted images get written to the /tmp directory. Perhaps it would be useful if Zotero modified the default TinyMCE behavior such that pasted images were saved to some zotero directory & could use the 'zotero://' protocol instead (assuming this would be possible)?
In my case (Vista, Adobe Acrobat Reader), I couldn't capture pictures from the pdf (the screengrab add-in didn't work). Finally, I found the nifty "snipping tool" under "Accessories". Works great!
I wonder if a work is being done on this issue and in a near future I would be able to use a local zotero folder for images and relink all of them in zotero notes. Or may be there is already a way to automatically change links in TinyMCE to a different folder?
Tanks for any suggestions.
Still I think it would be great if zotero would put pasted images in the note folder automatically.
However, I still hope that images pasted from clipboard would directly appear in the Report..
(Mac OS X 10.5) The method 3 works.
I have also tried to have an image not only as the top-level item, but to make it a sub-item of this parent item, or of a different one. It worked. However I find the technique too cumbersome.
Better would be IMHO:
If you put an image into a note from clipboard, or by dragging an image from a web page, or by drag-n-drop of a local file containing image - an separate file is created within the bibliographic item: either a file copy (like as is the case with PDFs from local file system or from the Web), or a new PNG/JPG. The rest would be the same as now.
Certainly, it would be more comfortable if Zotero could either
1. print images from 'file://' protocol in the Report, or
2. convert items that are pasted into memos, to 'zotero://' protocol automatically.
These methods work only in the Zotero program, as far as I can see. When I sync with the Zotero library on web the images don't show. Well, the web page shows a link you can click to view the image if you're logged in, but not to the general public.
My library is made for collecting evidence and sources about a specific person, which I want to be publicily available. Images can be scanned documents or photos in JPEG format. I don't understand why images should differ from any other type of evidence. Demanding that people must join as group members just to be able to view images is not an option. I need all images to be public so everybody can view them.
The web page is here: https://www.zotero.org/groups/halfdan_marius_jnsson
I tried to set Library options as public as I can, without letting the whole world being able to edit it, but I can't find an option for showing images.
I also tried to put a link to the image I can click on when I'm logged in, but that only resulted in showing the login screen.
So how do I go about to accomplish this?